The German Genius

by Peter Watson (Harper; $35)

How could a cultural superpower that gave the world Kant, Goethe, and Einstein have also produced Hitler? In recent decades, as obsession with the Third Reich has crested, Germanophiles have struggled to exalt the nation’s cultural virtues. Watson’s eight-hundred-and-fifty-page love letter to the all-stars of the Teutonic intellect is more an encyclopedia than a historical analysis, but his élan generates its own momentum, and his judicious attention to his subjects’ sex lives brightens what might otherwise be a serviceable slog. There’s an overreliance on secondary sources, which feels collegiate rather than scholarly, and Watson’s curatorial instincts can sometimes seem opaque. (One chapter is called “Cosmos, Cuneiform, Clausewitz.”) But though readers may not share all Watson’s enthusiasms—many will be tempted to skip “The Age of Fertilizers”—the book’s breadth is part of the point. ♦

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